Polish Jewry museum opening core exhibition in October

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) – After cost overruns delayed the official opening, the core exhibition of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews will open in October.

The announcement of the Oct. 28 opening was made Wednesday by Polish Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage Malgorzata Omilanowska.

Last week, the Polish Minister of Culture Bogdan Zdrojewski announced that Dariusz Stola will take over as museum director in March. Stola will succeed Andrzej Cudak, who has been serving since August 2012 and was tasked with completing construction of the museum building.

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews opened last April, but without the core exhibition. It currently hosts cultural and educational programs as well as temporary exhibits. The museum is a public-private institution whose construction was largely financed by the state and the city.

Stola is a historian researching, among other topics, Polish-Jewish relations and Holocaust history. He is the author or co-author of eight books and more than 100 articles.

In March 2013, he was decorated with the Order of Polonia Restituta for outstanding contribution in the study of, documenting and commemorating the history of the March 1968 anti-Semitic campaigns in Poland.